Sympathy for the Devil
by The Jollyginger
Summary: People— they crave what's worst for 'em. Maybe it's chems. Maybe it's booze. Maybe it's sticking your nose where you shouldn't. We love it. Want it, natural as we want eating and drinking and lovin'. We're all a bunch of addicts, aren't we? Or, at least, that's what I tell myself. Doesn't make me seem quite so bad, does it? No, I don't have much sympathy for any of us.


_**A/N: Don't say it. Don't you say it.**_

 _ **Yes, its been forever. BUT. While I'm not going to promise constant updates, I sincerely want to continue working on Fallout stuff. So, here's something I've sat on for... a long time. I still think it isn't in final draft form, and at some point I'll submit a final, "perfect" version. But for now, all you lovely people who have followed me: Choke on this.**_

* * *

Most bars in the Wastes look the same. There's the bartender, who I never look at sober if I don't have to, because he's always prettier when I'm a few bottles in. Often, a gang of raiders or soldiers or whatnot stink up a corner, yelling or shooting up or maybe beating on each other, which is always fun to watch with a bottle in my hand.

There are too many wars in the Wastes, but not enough caps, for the bars to be choosy about who they serve.

Then there are the travelers, the merchants, caravan workers and prospectors, all your assorted ne'er-gave-a-fuck-ers, the folks playing Caravan for extra caps, and maybe looking to get laid or at least to sleep somewhere other than in the acid rain. They're the ones chatting with each other, in beaten, weary voices that don't try to grab too much attention.

Finally, there's the locals— working folk who can afford the occasional drink, or at least to poison themselves properly, who sit silently at the bar, and most of them looking like somebody's pissed in their beer.

I've been all of them, all of these people, at some point or the other. Tonight, I'm the last. One of the grouchy fuckers at the bar.

The thing about bars in the Wastes:

Nobody comes here for a good time. Not really. Most come to forget. Forget that you can't afford to keep paying rent to the local gang, forget that raiders carried off your friend the other day so they could play soccer with his head, forget that he was never that great of a guy in the first place. Most people aren't. Most come to forget.

Forget who you are. Forget you lived once, forget what you've done, forget that you aren't quite sure where you get the temerity to keep pushing ragged breath after ragged breath.

Or, I guess, they come to get plastered for the sake of being plastered. I never can tell the two desires apart, these days. It doesn't help that they leave the same taste in your mouth.

This particular bar is a snug little shithole carved into the side of some overpass a few miles outside of what's left of Denver. There's a little light, flickering yellow bulbs that illuminate the dust clogging the air. There's sort of a door, a monstrosity of hammered scrap metal that reminds me of the saloon doors in those stupid Wild West comics I read as a kid.

It keeps out the worst of the elements— it's a cold night out, always is around Denver— but it's still flimsy enough that I sidle closer to the rattling heater the bartender's got rigged up.

The room itself is cramped, even with so few patrons tonight. The overpass sheltering the pub is as warm a spot as any to spend the night, even if there aren't any rooms, and raiders seem to stay away, so I suppose that's how the place stays in business despite the watery beer and the shifty crowd.

 _Said the pot to the kettle,_ I think, considering my tattered coat, which had looked decrepit a year ago when I pulled it off a corpse I found by the road. Poor bastard had gotten his head smashed in, and the coat's shoulders have always been stained an ugly maroon.

I take another long pull. Not drunk enough, yet. Not drunk enough by half.

I bring the bottle to my lips again, and tilt it back. Empty. Not a drop left.

It makes a _chink_ as it slams against the bartop, and I feel a slight crack beneath my palm. A few of the traders glance my way wearily, see I'm not wearing a gun—I bundle it in my bag when I go to bars—and return to their conversations, satisfied.

The bartender, a wrinkly, bald old bastard who isn't going to get much prettier no matter how shitfaced I get, makes a noise in the back of his throat like he's trying to stomach his own product.

"I gotta reuse those bottles, man. You gonna pay for a new one?"

I giggle at that. "Sure, yeah, yeah, I'll pay…" I reach into my pocket, grasp a handful of caps. I've burned through most of it already, and I just got paid yesterday, but what the hell? What else was I gonna use it for? A nice, warm, radioactive bath? I empty my pockets onto the counter, caps trickling into a fair-sized mound.

"...Just keep pouring, till I run out, okay? Think you can do that, without givin' in to arithmeti— arthritis?" I wiggle my tongue a bit, and it feels heavy as lead. Ooh, I'm finally beginning to stumble over my words. Good, that's good.

The progress of a hard night's work.

Wrinkly looks confused— probably doesn't know what arthritis is even when it isn't being slurred at him. But he does the important thing, and slides me a shot glass.

I shake my head, and then freeze while the world stops dancing around me. Hold onto the bar, to steady myself.

"Nah. Bigger." I say, slowly. I drag myself forward, lean on the bar, stare into his eyes and breathe boozy breath into his face. "Faster I path...pass…out, faster I'm outta your hair. So get pouring."

He regards me, his eyes and mouth drooping in a frown. I can hear rusty, tired gears creaking in his head— he's seen every kind of drunk, at some point or another, if he's worked this long. I'm just a harmless nut, with plenty of caps inside my shell. He's just gotta let me crack open.

I get analytical when I drink. My brain works better than it probably should, too. Must be all the practice I've given it.

But just in case the barkeep needs help deciding, I give him a big, rotting, yellow grin. I still have all my teeth, which is an accomplishment when you've broken most every bone in your body at one point or another.

Beady eyes hold my gaze, and he replaces the shot with something more reasonably sized. Without moving his lips—I think he thinks he's staring me down— and without looking away, he fills the glass with something gold and dirty.

I take a moment, and shake my lighter, a dented, ancient number, out of my pocket. A few seconds more of aimless grasping produces a partly smushed cigarette.

"Psmushed. Psmoke, psingular," I drawl. "Damn, I'm running low... you ever wonder how they go so fast, and how they're still around? Even this long after the War?" I ask the bartender.

His frown, if possible, droops even lower, looking like one more massive wrinkle among the dozens.

Otherwise, he doesn't answer. I'm sure, like all good bartenders, he knows not to chat with battle-scarred drunks with lots of caps to spare. Generally bad policy.

I continue anyway.

"I fick, * _hic_ * sorry, I mean fuck, wait, no, I mean ficker. Fuckure? Argh... Figure. Fig- _yerr_. Right. I FIGURE...bear with me, Wrinkly…" I burp and grin at him again, then knock back the shot.

Huh. Did I throw up a little bit or does it just burn that much? Wasteland moonshine, you've gotta love it.

The funny thing is, my mind is still far too clear for my liking. The problem with having a sharp mind, I find, is that it scrapes against your skull, pricks your eyes and stabs at your ears. It hacks into every thought, slashes emotions 'till they bleed into tears.

Worst of all, it saws at the scabs of memory, opening old wounds again and again so that fresh tears and salt can trickle in and make them ripe and wet, and… and…

Bad mix, drunkenness and reflection. Like gas and matches.

While I think and hate myself for it, I talk. Talk and talk. My lips flap open and shut like a book left in a storm, words tumbling out aimlessly like wind-torn pages.

"...fig-yerr, it's the same reason that so much booze is still floating around. Same reason Jet is still everywhere, but Stimpaks get more and more pricey. Y'know what I mean?"

It's funny, if Wrinkly the unhappy Bartender frowns any more, I think his face might freeze that way. Wouldn't that be a funny story? He frowns and frowns at himself frowning, and tries to stop and can't so he frowns some more.

Even funnier, 'cause that's who we all become, at some point. All us barflies.

Sad because we're sad because we're sad.

Hee, hee...

I tap my glass with the lighter. He fills it. I drink.

"It's 'cause, we _like_ the bad. Easy to make booze, easy to roll up tobacco. sure. Hell of a lot easier than making meds, amirite? You get it, right? Eh? Oh, fine, frown a little harder, why don't you? But see, it's more than that. You know what I'm drivin' at here, right? You know because you make a living off helping us poison ourselves— thank you, by the way, this is a top-notch little shithole you're running here— and I know, because, well, never you mind why I know. I'm the one asking the questions here, Wrinkly, you funny frowning bastard." I glare at him pointedly, and he refills my glass, and down the hatch— _better in than out_ — and I plow on.

Say one thing for the drunk— say we're stubborn. Say we persevere.

Or, say we're fools who rant at bartenders about things we don't understand. It's not like we care anyway.

"What I'm sayin' is, we both know. We know the real reason, that we keep the worse things for us around and let the good slip away. You and me, Wrinkly… fill me up, there're still caps in that pile, aren't there?"

Down the hatch. Cough and clear my throat, spit some vomit on the bartop. If Wrinkly cares, his frown doesn't get any deeper.

"You and me, Wrinkly. We know. People— they crave what's worst for 'em. Maybe it's 200 year-old junk food. Maybe it's booze. Maybe it's nothing like that, and it's sticking your nose where you shouldn't. We love it. Want it, natural as we want eating and drinking and fucking. In the long run, we're all a bunch of addicts, aren't we?" I hold up the empty glass, a final proof.

He takes the hint. The last drops of the bottle slosh in.

"Or, at least, that's what I tell myself. Doesn't make me seem quite so bad, does it?"

Behind me, somewhere, the scrap excuse of a door opens.

A slight man, with a face that swims and shimmers, slides in with the bitter Denver chill. Some of the traders playing Caravan closer to the door let out a collective shudder, and huddle closer together. One of them swears half-heartedly at the newcomer, who's holding the door open for his friends, three men that look like apes next to the smaller one.

All of them mercs, based on the leather gear and, more telling, the sudden stench of self-importance.

Or, I suppose, somebody might've just farted. It's a tight room, after all. I can hope, can't I?

The room feels cramped, with their arrival. More cramped, anyway. Some of the drinkers fidget uncomfortably. I fumble at my lighter.

The three big ones make their way to seats at the other end of the counter, the lone prospector drinking there quickly retreating, and slide in side by side, a few grimy stools between them and me.

Their movements are perfectly natural. Not a trace of doubt in them, they walk an unbroken trail from the crap-scrap door to the stools, their eyes staring ahead with unspoken purpose.

The skinny one, whose face hasn't stopped swimming quite yet, makes a big show of looking 'round the place, glancing at the crowded tables, then at the empty spot next to me.

He shrugs at the room as if to say, _What's a guy to do?_

Then, the very picture of reluctance, he drops into the seat next to me.

Up close, his face stays put, more or less. His skin is flushed and blotchy, with small, quick eyes and thin, twisted lips. Way he holds himself reminds me of a rat— small, tense, treading carefully, but starving and desperate enough to eat anything that bleeds.

And he looks hungry, today. His eyes gleam with it when they spy me in their corners.

He makes it abundantly clear he has no interest in me whatsoever, staring rigidly ahead and ordering a drink ("something light, Nuka and Rum if you have it"), before checking the beaten watch on his wrist.

It's broken. I can tell by the lack of _tick,_ _ **tick, TICKING**_ that always comes with the old, geared models, that once drove me a few steps shy of mad when its chatter was the only company I had on the road.

It's broken, but he seems quite intent on it. He almost seems to be looking through it.

Good ears; almost as wretched as a sharp mind.

As Wrinkly refills my glass with something new and gets to making Slim his drink, I say, "I'm clean, by the way."

His entire body jerks— his left hand especially. Jumpy.

He manages to steady his voice as he glances over his shoulder at me.

"You talking to me?"

I raise a hand. "Sorry, could you stop it with the bullshit?"

"What?"

I speak slowly, which isn't so hard, because my tongue is getting heavier. " _Bullllll. Shiiit._ Stop. it."

A slight spark of panic starts to catch in his throat. "Man, I don't know—"

"Sorry, still can't hear you over all the noise."

"Noise—?"

"Of a bull, shitting in your mouth."

Now the spark's caught, and I can almost hear his heart beating, trying to beat out the fire in his blood. He takes a breath, glances over to his friends, mouths something to them. One starts to get up, frowning with the effort it takes to move his considerable bulk.

Slim turns back to me, smiles indulgently, and says, "I think maybe you should take it easy for the rest of the night, man, you don't look like you can see straight—"

"For _fuck's sake!_ " My fist slams against the bartop, hard enough to crack bone or wood, and his left hand twitches again, almost flailing. " _Look_!"

I wriggle out of my long, filthy coat-this takes a while, with the room spinning 'round and 'round, but I manage-and show him the lining.

"Look, see. No gun. No knife." I toss it at the big one, who looks startled as he flails with it mid-stomp, and then grasps it uncertainly in his massive paws.

I turn out my pockets, drop a light pouch of caps and a broken necklace onto the bartop. "No keys, or anything sharp enough for me to get nasty," I snarl, and my other hand is crushing the cigarette in between its fingers. "I guess I could probably drop my pants, too, if you're wondering whether I have a knife down there. But, I should probably warn you; It's not a Fat Boy I've got hidden in my underwear."

Nobody laughs.

I blink, and look 'round at the bar. There seems to be a great scramble for all the other patrons to cluster together as densely and as far away from me and my new friends as the room allows.

Slim coughs, then glances somewhat sheepishly at his ape, who has paused, befuddled mid-stomp. "Um. Cliff. You can sit down, I guess."

Cliff nods, and walks backwards to his seat, piggy little eyes never leaving the pair of us. His friends glance at each other and wonder exactly where their brilliant scheme went awry.

Slim looks one part upset, two parts confused, his eyes resizing and reshaping me. I sip my drink, wash it down with smoke.

"So… I'm clean. Unarmed. Whatever you want to call it."

"Sure," he says slowly, his palms raised like he's talking to a dog that's snapping at a bone. "Okay. How did you know I was—"

"Too perfect. Three big, scary guys walk into a bar, they make talk and laugh and ruin everybody's night. Who's gonna tell them not to?" I sweep a hand towards Cliff & Co. "They also don't sit down that perfectly, or politely, or wait patiently for the bartender to get to them."

He takes his seat again, nodding slowly. He half-turns to face me on his stool, right arm resting on the bar, his left dangling behind him.

"How did you know I was scoping you for weapons?"

I snort, take a sip, slur, 'Always a weapons check. Or caps, if you wanted to rob me, but it takes a stupid goddamn thief to stick up a man in a bar, when you could have come in alone, scoped me out, and then went out to tip off your friends over there. Could have ambushed me a good half mile down the road, to keep this place a farm for fresh,unsuspecting targets. Plus, look at this thing." I shook out my tattered, filthy sleeve. "This scream 'payday' to you? Better luck with anybody else in this shithole."

Slim's laugh was a hacking, angry noise. "Robbers in these parts don't care who they steal from."

"Eh, sure. But you were checking me out in your watch's reflection, which suggests that you aren't a complete dumbass. So, clever enough to know how to size a mark up but too stupid to leave your muscle outside, or just hit one of these pricks instead?" I nod to the considerably better-dressed traders huddled in the far tables of the room. "Not so likely. Which means you've got another reason for bothering me, amirite?"

The slim man nods slowly, and his thin, colorless lips twist into an ugly smirk. "You know, you really had me going, there. What's in the cup, water-and-nuka?"

My turn to look confused. "Eh?"

Slim rolls his eyes, leans forward, and takes a deep whiff of my drink.

His smug look dissolves, and his eyes widen.

"This is actual booze."

"There wasn't any antifreeze in back, I asked."

"You're drunk," he says, slowly.

"Yuh."

"I was watching you. How many drinks was that, ten in the last five minutes? You should be singing 'Blue Moon' drenched in your own piss by now. How the hell did you—"

"Practice." I grunt.

He waits for me to elaborate. I don't, and blow some more smoke in his eyes. The room swirls pleasantly.

He swears under his breath and pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Fine. Christ. Let's start over. What's your name?"

"My name is Drunk, Impatient, and Angry. I'd tell you what my friends call me, but I don't have any of late. Must be my good looks." I gave him a big, yellow-toothed grin, and for a split second, I think I see a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. "What do I call you?"

The uncertainty, if there was any, vanishes, and he gives me a look so level I could use it as a ruler. "Slate. They call me Slate."

"To what do I owe the sobering pain in the ass that is your company, Slate?" I wave Wrinkly over without looking. The bartender raises an eyebrow, but fills my glass.  
Slate takes a cautious sip of his Ratpiss-and-Nuka. "I'm guessing you know already."

I snort mid-sip, and feel some liquor squirt out my nose.

He raises an eyebrow. "Your debt problem?"

"Could you be more specific?"

"Your debt problem… from a few days ago?"

"Could you be more specific?"

He blinks. "Seriously?"

Smoke, drink, smoke. Keep an eye on his left hand. Keep an eye on Cliff and his friends.

I gesture to my rapidly depleting pile of caps on the counter. "I've never been the best at handling my money, Slate."

He follows my gaze. "You don't say. Well, I have a feeling that Etri won't be satisfied with that answer."

 _Etri—? Oh, shit._

Slate might be an amateur, but he's been around the block. I'm too drunk to keep a poker face, and he grins. "Specific enough?"

"The pimp." I mutter, deadpan. A boar of a man even bigger than Slate's buddy Cliff, but more blubber than muscle. His hair was long and greasy enough to be a fire hazard should he decide to take up smoking.

Our conversation had been short, and I hadn't been sober then, either, but I remember it just fine.

I had staggered up to him, and asked about his goods. He had assured me of their quality, and of his personal favorites. I asked him about his prices. He said, good naturedly, that we could work that out later, chuckling at the booze on my breath.

I laughed with him, not mentioning that I hadn't been paid yet anyway, and asked where I should wait. He pointed me to a room with a mattress that smelled of stale Fancy Lads cakes and mothballs as well as semen.

Slate's definitely grinning now. I notice one of his teeth is made of metal. Christ knows where he found a doctor who was willing to do _that_.

"Etri and you had a deal, and he didn't understand what went wrong," Slate was saying. "Did the girl disappoint?"

The girl hadn't disappointed.

When the door opened, I had started to unbuckle my pants. It was quite difficult at the time, because my hands kept going everywhere but where I was telling them to go. So I had looked up, to apologize for the inconvenience.

She was skinny, but then, so were most in the Wastes. People like Etri were a rarity. Like fat unicorns. But her skinniness was more than taut skin and protruding ribs. It was the screaming lack of everything she had ever needed. The dirt in her hair (the places where it wasn't falling out), the rags wrapped around what was left of her frame.

The bruises on her everywhere, black-and-blue splotches of body paint that either her last customer or her employer had left her with.

The realization she probably wasn't much older than fifteen.

These were the things that made up her skinniness. The _lack_ of her was palpable, filling the room with its absence. There was so much of her that was supposed to be there, and I was staring at its ghost.

The door had swung shut behind her softly as the world breaking apart.

"Hey." Her voice was too soft for the rest of her.

"Are you...are you okay?" Yes, I had asked that. I wanted to make sure that my senses were lying to me. I wanted to make sure that everything was okay when it obviously wasn't, and I wanted it more than I ever wanted a drink.

She tilted her head. The world turned sideways with her.

"What do you care?" Words soft as velvet and sharp as glass.

I had opened my mouth, and patted my pocket. My very empty pocket. I remember wondering what I could give her. I remember not having an answer.

I thought about asking her name.

But a name would make her too real, and I drink for too many names already. That's what I told myself.

I thought about saying sorry.

But sorry doesn't mean anything, in the Wastes. Sorry is for corpses and children.

I don't remember much about leaving, but I remember throwing up outside the door.

No, it wasn't the girl who had disappointed that night.

Oh, I know. You don't have to say it. I told you, there's a reason most of us come here to forget.

I realize my eyes are closed, and that my glass is starting to strain under my grip. I force myself to put it down before I cut myself and opened my eyes.

Slate's still smiling. "See, Drunk, here's how this works. I'm not sure if you thought you could just rip Etri off or if you were actually so wasted that you forgot that a brothel ain't no charity, but I don't actually give a shit. I've spent the last two days tracking you for a few dozen caps, and I just want to go home and get paid. So give me the caps, and maybe I buy you one last drink for the night before me and my boys are back on our merry way." He inclines his own glass. I say nothing. I idly watch his left hand, which slowly creeps along the bar. Slate's confident. The question is, is it a gun strapped to his left or a knife?

I hear myself say, "Lot of fuss for Etri to make over a guy like me skipping out on him."

Slate shrugs, indifferent. "Well, he wants compensation for the girl, too."

"What?"

"Girls ain't much good if nobody wants to pay for them, man. I think this one wasn't too popular to begin with. Literally scaring a guy away? Etri had to make an example."

I stare at him. Then I slide around in my stool to stare into depths of my glass. I sip at it. My fingers barely shake at all.

"You do it?" I ask. My voice is as steady as an Old World road.

"Eh? No, I think it was Roscoe— he's that guy there, next to Cliff."

I study Roscoe. His cheeks are rosy and he's in the middle of telling a joke to his fellow apes.

Sounds funny.

"So he pulled the trigger."

"Well. I think he used a knife. Bullets are getting more and more expensive, y'know?"

"I know."

He reaches for the pile of caps. It's tiny compared to earlier but it should satisfy Etri.

"I never said I agreed," I say.

His hand pauses. Then he chuckles. "Look...I never learned your name…"

"Oh, I told you. Drunk. Impatient. Angry."

"Sure. Sure. And like I said, I never really gave a shit. I've enjoyed our little talk, really I have, but you don't want to fuck around with me right now."

"I'd never fuck around when it comes to drinking. See, I told Wrinkly to keep pouring until I pass out or the caps run dry." I lean forward, and give him my yellow, shit-eating grin. "And I'm not done drinking yet."

Silence tap-dances on the bar. Wrinkly sees it, and his eyes, shrewd and cautious, flicker from me to Slate and back again. His hands drift below the bar.

Cliff and Roscoe and the other merc see the silence too, and they know what it stare at Slate's back, waiting.

The crowd sees it, and they start to flutter out of the door, first in pairs, then in droves. Except for a few.

There are always a few who stay to watch.

The cramped, filthy room inhales, breathes as one.

Slate narrows his eyes. "It's going to be like that, huh?"

I shrug, and light another smoke. "Maybe you can figure out another way to compensate Etri for the girl Roscoe knifed. Maybe you and Cliff and the rest can take turns blowing his customers." I take a drag off the cig, and lift my glass to my lips.

The room exhales, and everything moves. Slate's left arm blurs. The mercs burst from their seats, fast for men of their size. Wrinkly dives beneath the bar.

I drink deeply.

Another breath goes by. Somebody yells in the crowd. Slate's arm spins out with a switchblade, the blade extended and coming fast. The mercs' footsteps pound the floor hard enough to make the walls shake. Two seconds, and they'll be on me.

Most people drink to forget. But there's more to it than that.

The last of the liquor tilts past my lips. Slate's knife slices through dust, through light, and towards my throat.

We drink because try as we might, there's something left of a conscience for us to keep running from.

I finish my drink, and breathe, and throw.

The glass catches Slate between his eyes. I twist away, but still the blade rakes across my shoulder. The pain brings a bloody clarity, and I grip my smoke— my last one— tighter.

Slate's staggering back, blood slipping through the fingers clutched to his face.

A few breaths, and Cliff will be at my back. Time to move.

"Motherfucker—" I hear Slate snarl, and it's all he has time to get out before I seize him by the scruff of his neck like a bad puppy, and use his head to hammer the bar into place. Once, twice, three times. Glass and bones break and blood bursts. The wood holds firm.

Wood's reliable that way.

 _Crink_ _ **thud CRACK.**_ _Crink_ _ **thud CRACK.**_ _Crink_ _ **thud CRACK.**_

Except, with more screaming in between. My cigarette glows merrily in my free hand.

Footsteps like drum beats behind me. I send Slate sprawling away with a knee to the gut and pivot, my fist pulling back...

...too late, as Cliff throws himself at me in a full tackle. The world goes sideways and I forget how to breathe for a second, briefly remember, and then forget again as his momentum carries the two of us over the bar and into a wall of bottles.

We land hard, a sprawl of limbs and confusion and broken glass, watery beer spreading beneath us like a puddle of blood.

I struggle to be the first to my feet, but he's on top even if I'm faster.

I only have a split second to see the bottle swing, and then the right side of my head explodes into stars and fire. Cliff's no virgin to bar brawls, that much is clear, and he doesn't let up. He slams me against the counter with one hand and smashes me in the jaw with the other. I writhe and squirm, but I'm wiry and he has about a hundred pounds on me. He settles into a rhythm, _smack_ _ **thud**_ _smack,_ and I can feel bruises forming across my face like a black and blue blush. I taste metal, and I get the feeling it ain't because I've found a cap under my tongue.

Everything hurts, but I'm not a virgin, either.

"Want a toke?" I snarl, and my hand— the one with a cig crushed in its fingers— blurs.

You've never heard a man swear until you've rammed a lit cigarette up his nostril.

While Cliff is hopping away on one foot clawing at his nose, I pick up a leaking bottle, slosh some of the contents in my mouth to wash away the taste of blood, swallow, and then chuck it as hard as I can at Cliff's smooth, bald scalp.

 _ **Crack**_ **.**

He sputters, and tries to spin and come back at me, but he flails and slips in the puddle of spilled liquor. I pick up another bottle, take another sip, and spit it out, before dropping it on his head.

Four bottles later, it's apparent Cliff won't getting up for a while. I nail him with a pint of shitty Vodka to be safe.

I spring over the counter and spit, "Who else?" A trickle of blood from where Cliff smashed me slips into my eye, and I squint through the burning.

Roscoe and his fair-haired buddy still haven't moved, probably wanting to give Cliff his chance to deal with me. Now they glance from the place where he's making noises like a dying Bramin, to each other, to me.

 _Chak._

That's a sound we all know, and we all freeze like the Denver night.

Wrinkly finally emerges from under the shelter of his counter, gnarled hands wrapped around a rifle.

"Whoa," says Roscoe. "Take it easy, old ma—"

He trails off when he finds himself staring down the barrel.

Wrinkly stares around at the tiny room. The shithole bar he's probably spent his life running. Looks at the blood and glass smeared across the counter, at chairs and tables overturned as customers fled, at the merc lying in a puddle of smashed glass and booze behind his counter.

It's at this point the rest of the spectators, drunk as they are, decide to take a smoking break outside.

Roscoe tries again. "Look, keep your finger off the trigger. It's just an argument, got a little out of control—"

"Shut up." Wrinkly snaps, and the rifle snaps with him, jabbing at Roscoe accusingly.

Roscoe shuts up.

Wrinkly's hands are shaking, and I can see shrewd, terrified eyes flicker across the room.

I've seen his type before. Maybe he knew how to use that gun once, but that was before the arthritis. Before his face shriveled like a corpse left in the sun.

"Take it outside. Right now." His voice is steadier than his hands, but only slightly.

Silence. I start to fidget. I can feel the weight of my wounds, now, getting heavier by the second. The room is starting to spin again.

"What the hell are you waiting for?" snaps a voice like a dog's whine. Slate's straddling an overturned table, still cradling his ruined face. "He's just some old fucker. That thing can't even get off more than one shot at a time."

"One's enough to put you in the dirt," growls Wrinkly. He doesn't sound so sure.

That's when I see his will start to melt away. He thinks he can't control us, and that makes him right.

Roscoe exhales and glares at me. "You. You could have just paid stingy motherfucker."

I blink. The room sways and changes colors.

Then it's their turn to start blinking when I start laughing.

"Just get out—" Wrinkly mutters, but nobody pays attention. The mercs look spooked.

I have to lean on the counter to keep upright. " _Stingy_. Ha ha, stingy me. And you sound so _angry_." I wipe mirthful tears away. "Did you complain about the blood on your shoes after you killed her, Roscoe? I bet you did. You _stingy motherfucker_ , _you_." I laugh a bit harder. My gut's starting to hurt.

"What the fuck? What are you talking about? Slate, did you tell him my name?" Roscoe backs up a bit, scowling at this strange new situation.

" _Stingy motherfucker_. That really hurts. And coming from you, you piece of shit? I'm goddamn crying."

Roscoe looks to his friend, the blond merc whose name I never learned, for answers, but gets only a shrug in response.

"What did I do to you?" The rosy-cheeked mercenary asks, bewildered.

"Oh, nothing. And that's the worst part. You killed her, because _I_ cheated you. All you want from me are fucking caps."

"Wha— the whore? You're angry because of _that_? Who was she to you?"

The look on his ruddy face is priceless. I laugh even harder. I might break my own ribs, if I carry on this way.

"Yeah. You would ask that. I bet you don't find yourself drinking much, do you, Roscoe? Not outside of celebrations or whatever. You probably go to bed sober as the dead, because why wouldn't you? Nothing to forget 'bout at all. You're not running, because there's nothing to run from. Christ, I envy you. Really, I do."

Roscoe steps farther and farther back, away from the ranting madman. Slate is cowering behind his table, and even Wrinkly's gone quiet, his gun drooping the same way his face does.

"Same thing probably happens to his penis, too," I mutter in reflection.

Old wood's unreliable that way.

My audience looks at me like I'm insane. I wonder how far wrong they are.

Wrinkly's rifle points at the floor, and they recognize their chance. The blond Merc moves first, charging at me head on, Roscoe skirting around the side.

I let them come, and breathe.

Inhale. Wrinkly's face is doing interesting things. First, the entire drooping mess scrunches up, wrinkles wrinkling. Then it starts to change color, from white to red to purple. He clutches his chest, and I realize it isn't his will that's failed him.

Exhale. They're getting closer, but there's time. I can always find time, in the space between breaths. Wrinkly slumps to the floor, clutching his rifle even tighter.

Inhale. The blond merc flies at me, and I make myself small and slide under his arm.

He whirls back around in time to see the stool whistling towards him, and then not much else, as I hear something crunch after the impact. I kick him as he falls, and I'm pretty sure he isn't getting up—

—Exhale, and _**bang**_ go the bells in my head. Inhale, exhale, go to bed.

Fuzziness and darkness, try to count to ten. I'm kissing the floor, and my everywhere is hurting again.

" _Crazy son of a bitch."_ Roscoe's voice bounces down a metal tube and through the booze-soaked cloth in my head before reaching me.

There's a kick, a thousand miles away, and my ribs express their outrage by cracking.

I try to move my head. My head tells me this is a terrible idea, perhaps as terrible as getting shitfaced and then picking a four-on-one brawl.

More noise, twisting and hard to grasp as thin smoke. A voice thick with blood and glass and pain. Slate.

"— _is he dead?"_

Am I? Am I finally?

" _I don't think so. I just gave him a smack."_

" _WIth a fucking lead pipe."_

Another kick, this time to my shoulder, as inquisitive as a foot can be.

" _Blood in his hair. I don't think he's getting up again, anyway. What do we do about Cliff and Anton?"_ Roscoe sounds more bored than anything. I can relate. Cleaning up after a fight is always a pain in the ass.

" _Fuck 'em. They can get home by themselves. Grab the caps and let's scr— ah, shit."_

Silence. But even a thousand miles away, I can feel the air slow and thicken with the weight of tension.

" _Ok, is HE dead?"_

" _He's an old fucker, like you said. Probably had a stroke…"_

" _Yeah? Try explaining that to the crowd outside. They're as like to lynch us as not."_

" _You thought this guy was dead, didn't get your balls in a twist."_ I get yet another kick. My head still feels like it's been stuffed with cotton balls and flooded with scotch, shaken but not stirred.

" _He's some drunk shit nobody will notice is gone until they realize the place isn't as stinking as it used to be. HE runs the only bar for twenty miles. Those are caravan traders outside, dumbass, which means they know that. If this is their only nearby safehouse..."_

It's funny, because it's true. Nobody to miss me. The greatest legacy I'll leave is the coat I stole from a corpse, which will warm some other corpse-to-be on the cold nights. And somebody will rifle through my bag, find my gun, and use it to create more corpses and more legacies that mean as much as the dust smothering the Wastes.

Just like Wrinkly, whose bar will burn once the booze dries up. Nobody to remember his name, because thinking and drinking don't mix.

Just like the girl. Nobody to remember her name, because I was too scared to ask.

I suppose that's okay. There's nobody left to remember mine either. Just Drunk, Impatient and Angry.

Except.

Slate asked for my name, didn't he?

" _Grab the gun,"_ Slate says. " _We'll blast our way out if we have to. Fucking Etri isn't paying us enough for this—"_

A shame to disappoint him. Especially since he went to so much trouble to track me down.

 _Chak_. Such a light sound, the cocking of a gun. And yet my world shakes with it.

I decide I'm not done drinking yet.

My bones creak, and my muscles start to burn. I try to count to ten, but my head's pounding in a beat of _one-two-oh-fuck-why-am-I-not-dead-yet._

I feel myself, as I push and strain.

One broken rib.

One budding concussion.

One fuckton of bruises turning my face different colors.

Too many glass cuts to count, plus the sting Slate gave me.

One hell of a hangover to look forward to.

But it isn't the worst I've had. Not quite.

I push harder. The music my body sings, in shrieks and curses, spurs me on like a Bramin given the whip.

The room swims, spins, twists like smoke and changes colors before turning upside down. I rise to my feet. Everything hurts, and I feel my grin like a knife jammed between my cheeks.

"What the fuck?" Music to my ears.

I turn. Roscoe's gaping, his rosy complexion going pale. I can see him cataloguing my wounds, the same way I did. He comes to quite an unsettling sum. His hands tighten around the rifle he plucked from Wrinkly's cold, dead grasp.

Slate's halfway to the door when he turns and sees me. For a second, everything is silence and horror and my yellow smile.

I take one rattling step forward, the weight of the world tilting about my shoulders.

"Please allow me to introduuuce myyselllf," I sing, belting it out in a slur. "I'm a maaan of tealth and waaaaste."

The gun moves slowly. Or at least, it seems to glide through amber as he brings it to his shoulder.

But I'm a devil, and the bar is my hell, and I'm faster. I move in the space between breaths.

I seize the rifle by its stock on its path up, and slam it onwards and upwards, smashing Roscoe's nose with the handle. The popping noise of the bone and the louder noise of his shriek is drowned in the roar of the gun as it fires at the floor.

Slate's screaming something, but neither of us can hear it; Me, because I'm still singing, Roscoe because he's too busy trying to shoot me.

The gun spins around between him and I in a deadly cartwheel, shot after shot ringing out and my eardrums complaining just as loudly as the bullets.

He's stronger than I am. I can feel the rifle sliding away, can feel my fingers giving.

So I grit my teeth, and slam my head into his freshly broken nose.

It hurts me more than it does him, what with my head already fuzzy from its romance with the lead pipe. For a second, all is stars exploding and imploding behind my eyes, and swirling light and a nauseous _**crunch**_ **.**

But my life has been pain from the beginning, and agony writhes its way into my heartbeat, and whispers with the rushing of my blood: _You are still alive_.

Oh, well.

When the room stops pulsing with light, I'm holding the rifle. Roscoe's holding his pancake of a nose, blinking tears and blood out of his eyes.

Amateur.

The handle of the rifle comes down, one, two, three…

 _ **Thud, crack.**_

You know the drill. I know it too well.

Roscoe's on the floor now, the handle of the rifle sticky with blood and hair. He's finished. I step over him.

I meet Slate's eyes. He could have run, but he's exactly where I left him, mouth agape.

Pants-shitting levels of fear can do that to a person.

Still looking into his eyes, I cock the weapon.

 _Chak._

He starts, ratlike eyes becoming unclouded.

"'Pleased to meet you,'" I sing, my voice hoarse. "'Hope you guess my name.'"

He starts to run, and finds himself pinned against the wall with the barrel caressing his adam's apple like a lover's fingers.

"Oh. Oh, shit. Don't, man, just don't. I'm just a fucking merc."

"You really are, aren't you?" My finger grazes the trigger. Musing.

"You'll never see me again. I won't even tell Etri. He'll toss my ass out once he hears about this, anyway..."

"Yeah. I know." I sigh and chuck the rifle away. It lands with a _thunk_ behind the counter, quite close to its owner's corpse, and, remarkably, doesn't go off.

Slate stares after it, the expression on his bloody face ecstatic.

"I—thank you! Holy fuck!"

"Bullets are getting more and more expensive, y'know?" I explain, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He has time to look confused, and then horrified, and then only time to gargle when my hand wraps around his throat quick as a snake wrapping its prey.

We stand like that for a moment. I glare. He chokes.

"What was her name?" I snarl.

"Ach—wh..o.."

"The girl." My fingers loosen by a hair, which is two hairs more than he deserves.

"The...the whor—"

"The _girl_ that HE—" I jerk my chin towards Roscoe, "—murdered for no reason. The one your boss treated like a slave. THAT girl. What was. Her. Name?"

His face is turning the color of a Mutfruit.

"I—I don't know! No...nobody…"

Nobody cared.

Figures.

A squeeze and a slam, and Slate's wrapped around an overturned table, wheezing and weeping. For life, for his mercs, for the mother he probably would have sold for the right price.

I could end him now. I could walk around the room and snap their necks neatly as I snap open bottles. I wouldn't lose any sleep. Any more, anyway.

But.

There's no judgement in that. No closure, in Devils ripping one another apart. Just me, and blood flowing like booze.

And the girl deserves better justice than that.

I grab my bloodstained coat, wrap it around me to keep away the Denver cold and keep the ice in my chest from melting too early.

I grab my small pack, with my gun bundled up with dirty clothes. I find one of my few stimpaks, and close my eyes as everything goes numb for a second, bones twisting back into shape and skin tightening over cuts.

Grab my hat, and incline my head respectfully to Wrinkly's corpse. He died frowning, and his face sags more than ever, now.

I slide the rest of my caps into my pockets. I jingle slightly when I walk.

"I got spurs, that jingle, jangle…" But I'm not going very merrily along, so my voice trails off.

And, of course, I grab a bottle—one of the few intact ones— before kicking the scrap door outwards.

 _Chak. Chak. Chak._

Three barrels, staring at me like windows to my soul.

"Who are you?"

The devil that escaped the fire.

The Denver sky is ash and charred bone, a few chalky stars showing through the soot and gristle.

The only light is the pulsing cigarette, twisted in the sticklike grasp of the woman with a face like tree bark.

You know. Back when trees were alive.

The orange glow, waning and waxing like a heartbeat, paints her face and the staring barrel of her gun, the faces of the two other merchants packing—boys, barely old enough to grow a beard in this cold hell— as well as the shape of the crowd behind them.

"Who are you?" The woman asks again, taking a puff of her cig while keeping her gun trained on me. A woman after my own heart. "What the fuck happened? We heard shots, and screaming, and...singing."

"The bartender's dead," I say simply. "It happened because of them. They're in there. They won't be putting up a fight, whatever you do with them. Also, some free booze, but most of it's spilled, so…"

The woman quirks an eyebrow. Without moving her gun, she skirts around me and peers through the door.

Silence, for a second. The boys twitch when I lift my bottle, but manage to avoid shooting me as I toke.

"There were four of them," the woman says finally. "Three about twice your size. You did all this?"

I shrug.

"How?" she demands. "Who the hell are you?"

I stare at her for a second. Then I roll up the sleeves of my left arm.

The ink of the tattoo on my forearm has stayed dark as tar through the years.

A skeletal buzzard in flight, and in its grasp, a wailing infant.

Curses and whispers flutter through the crowd suddenly as ripples through a stepped-in puddle.

" _What is it? I can't see..."_

" _He's one of the Black Mercs."_

" _You mean—"_

" _Just shoot 'im and 'ave done._ "

"He's a fucking Talon!" The cry came from the night, everywhere and nowhere, simultaneously pointing out the obvious and making it uncomfortably real.

The woman's eyes flicker from the tattoo to the crowd to the trashed bar.

"Why should we let you leave?" she asks.

Let me leave. Let me live.

"You do any trade in the town, a few days back?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Might be I did. Why?"

"You know Etri?"

The twist of her mouth says she does indeed.

I jerk my head. "They're his." I leave the thought hanging.

The night gets a few degrees colder.

"Is that so?" The woman nods slowly. Smokes slowly. Her expression is wood, but her eyes have become bullets that penetrate the flimsy Saloon door.

Silence. Expectant. Bloodthirsty.

"They wanted…" I hesitated, then start talking, slurring really, drunk on truth. "They wanted money. Because they had killed one of the girls, because I hadn't paid her, and Roscoe used a knife because bullets are too expensive and they were too cheap, and I didn't know her name because I was too cheap, and nobody cares, and I just…"

I realize my throat's burning. Like the afterburn of strong whiskey, except it won't leave, and my chest is heaving like I'm throwing up, and my eyes sting like their first opening the morning after.

It's been a few years, since I cried.

Did the Devil ever cry, in the fires of Hell? Did his tears evaporate before they fell?

Silence. Unsure.

The trader woman, the Bark Lady, stares at me.

Her eyes are bullets. Her breath is gunpowder.

I fear those eyes, more than I fear the guns waving at me.

"Okay." She makes a small gesture, and the crowd parts, glaring and fidgeting. There's little sympathy for the Devil, here.

But maybe more than I deserve.

I take a step forward. Then:

"Can I bum a smoke? I lost mine up one of their noses."

She flicks me one of hers.

Another step forward and this time it's she who speaks.

"What's your name, Talon?"

I stare into the night, the night of ash and bone and more than a hint of gunpowder, and see myself staring back, and I whisper it away. It's like sour beer on my tongue. It leaves a burn like Wasteland Moonshine.

"Alastair. Alastair Cole. I'm a courier, these days."

She gives another small nod. Then, as I walk away, she speaks, soft and devastating as a heartbeat.

"Thank you, Alastair."

I freeze, and start to say something; _Please don't,_ maybe, or, _why?_

And then I'm melting into the night, the night that opens its arms and hugs me with the Denver chill, and I'm stalking along the broken interstate. I don't get far before I hear four gunshots stacked neatly side by side like books before they tumble off the shelf.

Goodbye, devils. I don't have much sympathy for any of us.

I drink, and walk, and cry, a little. At some point I stop, and spin, and see Wrinkly's Shithole glowing, an ember to warm up the night. I suppose it was merciful, in some ways, to shoot them before burning the place to ashes.

Presumably, they stripped it of everything valuable first. The nights are only getting colder. They always are. Traders understand that better than anybody.

I make a fire of my own, only a speck, and use it to light her cigarette. I get the sense that if I didn't pay her for it, she'd say it's still hers.

I get the feeling Etri would say the same thing.

I stare into the night, and I say to the girl, "I'm sorry. Not that that means anything, but..."

The girl doesn't answer. Not sure why I expected her to.

One last silence, for her. The night breathes with me, inhales the smoke of the burning corpses, exhales the sweet stink of guns and booze and blood.

Somewhere, miles away, I hear gunfire. Somewhere close, somebody's dying.

I drink. The bottle is sucked dry as bone. Everything seems to burn.

Two words, for the night; Flimsy as velvet and broken as glass.

"...I care."

And then the bottle spins out into the night, and I'm gone before I hear it shatter.

* * *

 _ **A/N: Ta da. My first one shot. This is my OC Courier Six, who maybe someday I'll use in a full story.**_

 _ **In some ways, I know this is a really simple, even cliche story; but dammit, I had fun writing it, and I hope you guys had as much fun reading it.**_

 _ **And, yes, elephant in the room. I'm not done with TSWOF. Expect some action on there soon. I'm trying to be much more active in this hobby this year, because it's always felt like more than a hobby.**_


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